Echelon Corp, the Palo Alto, California company pioneering the concept of the Local Operating Network, has launched a new line of products designed to enable electrical devices in homes, offices and factories to communicate with one another through existing mains power circuits. The idea is that manufacturers can for instance build light dimmers that control lights throughout a house without ever being wired directly to the light fixtures, and a security system could, on detecting an intruder, turn on the outside building lights, flash the lights in each room as the intruder moves through it, and open a driveway gate to let in the police – all via commands sent through the building’s power wiring. The key to the products are the use of spread spectrum technology to minimise the signal disruption caused by noise on the power lines. Echelon new products, due early next year, are the PLT-10 Transceiver Module and the PLC-10 Control Module, each using a spread spectrum chip. The PLT-10, coming in an encapsulated shell, is for designers with unique size, coupling circuit, or AC or DC voltage requirements and has to be used with Echelon’s Neuron 3150 chip, power line coupling circuitry, and a power supply. The PLC-10 is a complete control node that includes LONWorks power line transceiver, coupling circuit, switching power supply, memory socket, and Neuron 3150. Both are sampling now with volume in December, at $20 for the PLT, $70 for the PLC, when you order 25,000 or more. Echelon plans to introduce specially designed versions of the power line products for Europe in early 1993 with a second Echelon-developed circuit that uses narrow-band signalling.
